You don’t know him, but he’s brought more music to Syracuse than just about anybody

If you’ve attended a concert at a Central New York venue within the last 43 years, there’s a good chance Chuck Chao booked and promoted that event.

While Chao has played an important role in bringing many popular artists to the area, chances are you might not recognize his name. As the driving force behind Creative Concerts, he has promoted shows at The Lost Horizon, Symphony Hall, The Westcott Theater, Paper Mill Island, The Carrier Dome, Uncle Sam’s, The Landmark Theater, Jamesville Grove and The Smith Opera House among many other venues.

Casual music fans may think being a concert promoter is a dream job, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Longtime concert photographer and music fan Warren Linhart recently talked with Chao, to reflect on his lengthy career as a promoter in Central New York and what goes on behind the scenes.

W.L.: Being a concert promoter certainly sounds exciting, though many people might have misconceptions about what exactly it is that a promoter does. How would you explain to someone what you do?

C.C.: Overseeing everything! In addition to promoting the event, it’s facilitating the sale of tickets either through the venue or through our ticketing. These days, we have people that work with websites, e-mail lists, Facebook and Instagram. On show days, we’re like the band’s local management team for their event. We facilitate what it takes for them to come in and do a proper show. I do some delegation and it’s always to those who I know will get the job done.

W.L: You’ve been a concert promoter for over 40 years. The concert business has changed dramatically during this time; it appears that there has always been an evolving learning curve. Take me back to the beginning. What were the first events that you were responsible for as a promoter?

C.C.: It was kind of by accident. In high school, I threw a few keg parties, made a few bucks and liked it. While working in the family business in 1975, I threw a clambake in a buddy’s backyard and that too went over well, so I said, “next time, let’s book a band.”

Back in those days, WOUR-FM was the station a lot of people listened to, so I called the general manager, Jeff Chard, at the radio station. He steered me to Dave Rezak and Bob Perry. They helped guide me through the steps. We wound up booking (the late blues artist) Freddie King. I had clambake on my mind, but it wound up being a chicken barbecue, and the location that was receptive to this was the Jamesville Grove. It actually worked!

I had family and friends helping out at the show, and it made money -- about $1,500 and for a 20-year-old kid, that was a lot of money in 1976.

W.L.: You had your first taste of success with a national act on the first try.

C.C.: Yeah, I was riding high, but then I got knocked around a little bit and found out what the concert business was really all about and how risky it can be. From there, I started working with Bob Perry, and Dave (Rezak) gave me a shot booking some clubs with local bands. Bob was the one who introduced me to Jack Belle, who became my mentor and then my partner. People were pointing me in the right direction, the right people helping me at the right time, and it grew from there.

W.L.: When I came to this area, I remember Jack Belle was already a well-established promoter.

C.C.: Yes, he was one of the top promoters in Upstate New York at that time. He worked in Albany, Utica, Syracuse and Binghamton. I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher.

From the early days of concert promotion, from left, Ron Wray, Howie Castle and Jack Belle. Photo courtesy of Ron Wray.

W.L.: Sadly, Jack Belle was only in his 40s when he passed away in 1987. That had to be rough on you personally, but also regarding business.

C.C.: Oh yeah, the waters were filled with sharks. My competition was saying, “Oh, that poor guy lost his backer, his partner and he’s out of business.” But I had a friend, Jane Garrity, (another mentor) who was a friend of Jack’s. She was at the (then) Premier Talent Agency. We developed a good relationship. She got word to me about a date at the Carrier Dome for the band U2. At the time, U2 was a red-hot band and I got them booked at The Dome which did a lot for my credibility and kept me rolling. I also had a good relationship with her boss, Barbara Skydel, [who went on to become the first female head of Premier Talent, which at the time was a major talent agency. Skydel wielded a lot of influence.]

W.L.: Prior to U2 at the Dome in October, 1987, what was the first arena show you booked?

C.C.: The first arena show I booked on my own was The Doobie Brothers in the late 70s in Utica. Their guarantee was $25,000 which was top-dollar then. Those show tickets were less than $10 then. The Doobies were touring to sell records -- it was a volume game. They weren’t touring to make a lot of money.

W.L.: Ah, the good old days. Ticket prices started to rise along with everything else.

C.C.: They sure did. I remember around 1990 I got pitched a band by an agent and their rate was $100,000. I said to him, “That seems kind of steep, doesn’t it?” He says to me, “Chuck, it’s the number of the summer.” Now those numbers have no limit.

W.L.: The guarantees rose significantly. I clearly remember when The Eagles went out on tour in the summer of 1994, that tour marked the beginning of much steeper ticket prices, and now 25 years later, the prices are much higher. For those high guarantees, you’ve got to have deep pockets to cover the risks.

C.C.: Most of those shows are now in the hands of publicly traded companies like Live Nation and AEG. Back in the day, it was a lot of people like me -- regional and local promoters and we were afforded the opportunity to book The Carrier Dome, 30,000 capacity places like Vernon Downs, baseball stadiums. Now the behemoths of the business have a lock on a lot of that stuff, but on the other side of the coin, we have adapted.

W.L.: So now you go chiefly after smaller, yet lucrative, tours?

C.C.: There are a lot of tours out there on the smaller end, anywhere from 300 seats to 5,000 to 6,000, and that’s kind of the niche we’re in right now. Sometimes we go bigger, though not as often as we’d like, but that’s where more of the local and regional people that are still out there doing it are. These are the ones that haven’t been bought or squeezed out or whatever. There are still some good opportunities out there in that range.

W.L.: You recently promoted the 40th Anniversary Joe Jackson concert at Eastwood’s Palace Theater, which was a sellout.

C.C.: Yeah, and I was also the promoter of his first show in Syracuse in the late 70s. That was at the (now torn down) Uncle Sam’s Club on Erie Boulevard. That show was packed, wall-to-wall people with a line around the block. (pause) They were both great shows.

W.L.: You might be surprised to know that even if people have heard of Creative Concerts, and if they recognize your name, they might not realize that you are the man behind that operation for over 40 years, and now you’re also seeing many artists touring again after long absences, especially lately.

C.C.: That’s right, there are more opportunities because these bands need to work in order to survive. They’re not living off the records anymore. Because of the internet, there is hardly any more record business, but that in itself opens up a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of bands out there.

W.L.: In your long career, what would you say are your biggest challenges?

C.C.: I think any promoter would tell you that the hardest thing to do in this business is getting the right bands at the right time. The booking level in the last few years, the live stuff, has seen a pretty good resurgence. There are a lot of venues and promoters out there that are hungry for content, so for the stuff that’s going to make you money, there’s always competition. So the biggest task is to consistently get the right acts and have those people stay with you. Sometimes they outgrow you and they go on to Live Nation amphitheaters.

W.L.: So, with this increase in bands going out on the road, what is involved when you’re looking for talent?

C.C.: Sometimes the business comes to us, and sometimes we seek it out. My partner, Dan Mastronardi, runs the Westcott Theater. He has a good ear to the street. We keep our ears and eyes open. We watch, we listen, people make suggestions and we’re always trying to talk to younger people to find out what they’re tuning in on. We have younger interns. Years ago, you could look at Billboard and radio playlists, and if it was on the radio, you had a pretty good chance for success. When we were kids, the only place to get new music was the radio. Well, the radio isn’t really that important anymore. There are so many genres of music these days. It’s fragmented all over the place. It’s tough to keep up with all of that. We also have people that we work with on a regular basis, and they actually plan their tours to include us. Other times, we get an opportunity to break new artists and hope they come back with us, and the next time, they play a bigger venue.

W.L.: So, a lot of this is networking and building relationships?

C.C: To a point, yes. It’s not quite as relationship-oriented as it used to be, but it still is a relationship-driven business.

W.L.: Bruce Springsteen performed at the Onondaga County War Memorial in September 1978, and when he made the leap to doing stadium tours, specifically the two Carrier Dome shows in 1985, those were your shows. You had a relationship established.

Wading into the fans sitting on the broad shoulders of saxophonist Clarence Clemens, Bruce Springsteen belts out a tune in concert at the Syracuse War Memorial on Sept. 12, 1978. Clem Murray / The Post-Standard

C.C.: Yes, but in the 90s, his dome show was with another promoter. (Ron Delsener out of NYC). That was around the beginning of the big corporate behemoth.

W.L.: Odds are that at some point in your long career, something was bound to happen where you got clipped financially.

C.C.: Yeah, you have to carefully get the act, and once you get that, you’ve got to sell the tickets. The financial risk is always on the promoter’s head.

W.L.: Your financial stake in a concert goes well beyond their guaranteed fee. One big show could bust a promoter?

C.C: It could happen. If a band gets a guarantee of say $50,000, you’ve got to pay for stagehands, security, sound and lights, catering, etc. Now that raises the cost for a properly produced show. You’ve got to sell enough tickets just to break even, let alone looking into the profit margin.

W.L.: It’s almost inevitable that at some point, you ran into a situation where problems cropped up that you weren’t responsible for. Then what?

C.C.: Well, an artist might not be able to perform at the last moment. In a case like that, you have to approach the situation professionally and deal with things like gentlemen. You might have to refund the ticket buyers or reschedule the date. There are always contracts, but you’d be surprised at how many things that are involved get straightened out from personal relationships. If every contract I signed had to have an attorney scrutinize every little thing, I’d go broke.

W.L.: You’ve promoted many significant shows over the years with some very popular artists. I can well imagine some of these artists have huge egos and could be difficult to deal with. How do you handle something like this?

C.C.: The artists want to make money. They’re pretty much on the level. You might get some different personalities, but in the end, it winds up being that we’re on the same team. The artist wants to put on a good show for their fans, we want to put on a good show for the fans, and everybody hopes the business is good and we’re all making some money for our efforts.

W.L.: There was a lot of active competition here back in the 70s and 80s. Was there any collaboration between promoters then?

C.C: Oh, heck no! It was very cut-throat. Everybody was cutting each other’s throat whenever possible (laughs). It was healthy competition, and you respected your competitor because you knew how difficult it is to do what we do.

W.L.: It did change though. When did you notice this started to happen?

C.C.: I think some collaboration came about in the early 90s, but by the 2000s, there was some partnering with others in different markets. We did that because it split the risk, but it also brought in value to the local market with promotion and e-mail lists.

W.L.: You booked a number of bands early on that went on to giant careers -- Bryan Adams played the Lost Horizon, The Police played at Uncle Sam’s, just to name two.

C.C.: Yeah, record companies used to finance many promising bands’ initial club tours but The Police bucked that trend early on. They had a European deal, but at the time of the infamous Syracuse Fire Barn show, they had come over on the strength of an import record. “Roxanne” caught on quickly but it was only after that when they landed their American record deal. [The Fire Barn was a small club in downtown Syracuse near City Hall where the band The Police played on their first American Tour. That show has become legendary around here because it was after the band had quickly become famous that many people claimed that they had been there among the masses for that show when in fact there were only a small handful of people in the venue that night.]

W.L.: Chuck, for the record, that’s one show I was not at.

C.C.: (laughs) I booked three shows on that first Police tour, and none of them had a lot of people in the audience. They had put up their own cash and had a beat-up van to get them around. They built up a quick following and eventually worked stadiums including two shows at the Carrier Dome (1982 and 1984) and those were both my shows.

W.L.: Looking back, which concerts stand out as you think back over the years?

C.C: Oh… well… I booked a lot of very memorable shows at the Lost Horizon: Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses, John Lee Hooker (with Robert Cray and Elvin Bishop in the same show), Johnny Winter, Nick Lowe, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Graham Parker… lots of great memories… and then there were the dome shows: Springsteen, The Police, U2. The Symphony Hall shows were a lot of fun too: Crosby and Nash, Peter Frampton, John Hiatt, David Byrne (pauses)… nice venue, but that building needed too much work.

W.L.: How many shows do you think you’ve booked in your career?

C.C: Wow, that’s a good question. I don’t know… it’s got to be over 1,000 shows, and that would be conservative. It’s been 43 years. In this business, you have the memories but as they say, you have to move forward.